Dragon Quest 1, 2, & 3 coming to Switch

[ChadFL]

Originally Posted by emailking

In japan or everywhere?

Worldwide, but still some absurd sales numbers. The original Dragon Quest III is legendary for it's amazing sales numbers on the NES, which amounted to around 4 million sold. The fact that this remake has apparently already sold more than half of that is incredible.

With most of those Dragon Warrior/Quest games back on the NES, Japan accounted for like 95%+ of copies sold. I believe the original Dragon Warrior game only had a larger share in North America because they gave you a free copy with Nintendo Power, which was how I got that game (my 1st JRPG). I'd love to know the breakdown on sales by region for this release. I imagine North America and Europe make up a larger share of Dragon Quest market, but it's likely still very heavily skewed towards Japan.

[ChadFL]

While I would like to see some further remakes of Dragon Quest games, it is kinda neat that you can play every mainline Dragon Quest game on a Nintendo handheld from the DS, 3DS, or Switch I have all of these.

Dragon Quest I, II, III - Switch collection on one cartridge
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake - Switch
Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake - Switch, come 2025
Dragon Quest IV, V, VI - Nintendo DS
Dragon Quest VII, VIII - Nintendo 3DS
Dragon Quest IX - Nintendo DS
Dragon Quest X - Wii U/Switch
Dragon Quest XI - Switch

[dyne]

I managed to nab the DS releases before they went high. Got all of them for around $40-60 each.

[ChadFL]

Originally Posted by dyne

I managed to nab the DS releases before they went high. Got all of them for around $40-60 each.

I also managed to grab the strategy guides for all 3 of those, which are among my most valuable guides. Seemed like it was a small print run on all those games in North America, so prices have spiked - especially on DQ V, which goes for well over $150 CIB.

Surprisingly, PNP Games Canada actually had a re-stock (sealed) of Dragon Quest VII and VIII for the 3DS a few weeks ago, just ahead of Black Friday for prices far below market value. Was going to post here, but sold out pretty fast.

[emailking]

I beat the cave in Samanao and changed classes for the first time, my thief to a Sage!

[emailking]

I'm in the

[Show spoiler]Underworld

!

[ChadFL]

Anyone know if any official English language physical strategy guide exists for DQ 3 HD-2D? I'm guessing the answer is no. All I see on Amazon or other book retailers are a few dodgy looking self published guides with no reviews or a few crappy reviews. Hell, do ANY major publishers still .are printed game guides in the West these days?

[Diesel]

Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom both have official guide books. I didn’t know anybody still used those though. I haven’t had one since 1999.

[ChadFL]

Originally Posted by Diesel

Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom both have official guide books. I didn’t know anybody still used those though. I haven’t had one since 1999.

Yeah, I rarely do either. With the Dragon Quest guides, it's more for my collection that anything else. I have the Dragon Quest 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 guides in English since those were picked up when English guides physically were stil very common. Was hoping to add the VII, XI, III 2D-HD at some point. Might just pickup the Japanese versions for some of those as they do exist and are fairly reasonably priced. Honestly, for some, you can still discern a lot of the content even if it's in Japanese from the illustrations.

[emailking]

I stopped trying to find printed guides like 5 years ago. I know the DQ7 remake had one but Japanese only (I got it). Don't think DQ8 remake or 11 had anything. I kind of doubt it but if you find anything I will buy even if it's Japanese.

[emailking]

I'm about to

[Show spoiler]take on Zoma!

[ChadFL]

Funny, but despite being a big Dragon Quest fan for decades, I never knew until very recently that nearly every mainline Dragon Quest game in the series was farmed out to third party developers. They didn't move the development in house until Dragon Quest X. I wouldn't say there is a big discrepancy in the quality of DQ games, but generally speaking, it seems the games developed by Heartbeat are at the lower end of most peoples' rankings of the series, while the Level-5 and Square Enix games (especially XI) are at the higher end, with the early Chunsoft games varied (III and V are mostly beloved, IV well liked, I and II more rudimentary and on the lower end of most rankings). You can definitely see Level-5's style with DQ XIII & IX.

Dragon Quest 1-5: Chunsoft
Dragon Quest 6-7: Heartbeat
Dragon Quest 8-9: Level-5
Dragon Quest 10-11: Square Enix
Most Dragon Quest Remakes: ArtePiazza

[emailking]

6-7 are 2 of my favorite games. I might actually rank 3 below them, but 4 above. Anyway, I am in the post game now. Wow!

[Akibiyori]

Originally Posted by ChadFL

Funny, but despite being a big Dragon Quest fan for decades, I never knew until very recently that nearly every mainline Dragon Quest game in the series was farmed out to third party developers.

Enix was a publisher rather than a developer so practically all of their stuff was made by other companies (Tri-Ace, Quintet, etc.) I presume Dragon Quest switched from Chunsoft because Horii wanted to improve the look of the series (VI and III SNES definitely look far prettier than anything the series had beforehand.) I’d say the Heartbeat-era was generally a plus; VI doesn’t rank as high these days but the SNES remake of III is still typically considered the definitive version and VII was hugely popular in Japan and remains liked there today. I count VII among the best DQ games, it just took so long to come out it looked downright homely to the general audience by 2001…and Enix only started using Toriyama artwork to promote the series here that same year despite DBZ having exploded in popularity in North America in 1998.

[dyne]

I got about halfway through 7 on my 2DS and just got burned out. I really should return to it someday.

[emailking]

7 and 11 are the longest ones by a lot. I'm surprised I've gotten through 7 3 times (twice PSX on PS3, once 3DS)

[Akibiyori]

Originally Posted by dyne

I got about halfway through 7 on my 2DS and just got burned out. I really should return to it someday.

It’s definitely a lot to get through, so I can’t really blame anyone for not quite taking to it, but I really like how it takes the series episodic approach to the extreme. So many self contained little stories with entertaining NPCs; it’s like watching a good TV show.

[ChadFL]

Originally Posted by emailking

7 and 11 are the longest ones by a lot. I'm surprised I've gotten through 7 3 times (twice PSX on PS3, once 3DS)

DQ 7 was great, but it's reputation of being unnecessarily long is warranted. Man, that game has to be a good 10-20 hours longer than any other game in the franchise and one of the longer RPG's I've ever played. The 3DS version is condensed a bit, but still like 70-80 hours just for the main story. The original PS1 version is more like 100 hours.

[emailking]

PS1 version it's 5 hours before you get to the first battle lol. But after that I thought it was mostly the same.

[emailking]

Beat the suprbosses. Just have to get all the mini medals and friendly monsters for plat. I also want to try my hand at

[Show spoiler]Zoma unweakened

. Was by far the hardest thing you could do in the GBC version.